New Zealand's Immigration Minister says it is a coincidence that his announcement of tighter access to skilled work visas came in the same week that Australia and the US announced changes to foreign worker visas.

"It certainly was a total coincidence that it happened to be within 24 hours of Australia's change in their [457 visa]," Michael Woodhouse said. "We have been working on this policy for several months — about a year, in fact."

An official of the U.S. congressional watchdog says the removal of all guest workers on CW-1 permits will result in a 26 to 62 percent reduction in the CNMI’s Gross Domestic Product — “a relatively large negative effect on the economy.”

In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Thursday, David Gootnick, director, international affairs and trade of the Government Accountability Office, also said that their “preliminary analysis shows that the current number of unemployed domestic workers in the CNMI is insufficient to replace the existing CW-1 workers or to fill all the nonconstruction jobs that planned development projects are expected to create once their business operations commence.”

Pacific Islands Report is a nonprofit news publication of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Offered as a free service to readers, PIR provides an edited digest of news, commentary and analysis from across the Pacific Islands region, Monday - Friday.